In many ways, last night typified the season for both Carlos Beltran and the Mets.

He flashed his tantalizing talents with a three-hit night in the middle of a red-hot streak, but it was his ill-advised base-running gaffe that killed their first-inning rally and set the tone for their 6-3 loss to the Nationals.

Beltran followed Kaz Matsui’s one-out triple with an RBI infield hit, then took second on Cliff Floyd’s groundout. But he was thrown out inexplicably trying to steal third, taking the bat out of David Wright’s hands and ending the threat.

“I’m not going to nit-pick every time a guy gets thrown out,” manager Willie Randolph said. “Matter of fact, he was safe. That’s a part of our game. You live by the sword, sometimes you die by the sword. He thought he could make it, and he did and the umpire called him out.”

And that took the bat away from Wright, who leads the team in RBIs and has hit .347 over his last 25 games.

“I thought I made it,” Beltran said. “The umpires . . . sometimes they miss a play, sometimes they don’t. It’s hard to argue because it was close.

“I know [Wright] was hitting, but I saw the second baseman way out and the shortstop way out, so I thought I was going to have a chance. Sometimes when you steal you don’t steal because you’re trying to get to third. Sometimes you steal because you want to open a hole. You think he’ll swing and find a hole.”

It came on a night when Beltran went 3-for-4 with a run scored and two RBIs. He’s hit .348 with nine runs scored and six RBIs over his last 12 games, and .333 with a dozen runs scored and eight RBIs in his last 18 to raise his average to a solid .272. But the Mets didn’t give him $120 million for solid, but spectacular.

“Because a lot of people say we’re out of it, that [doesn’t] mean we’re going to quit. This is our job man,” Beltran said. “We’ve got to work hard, play hard and try to win.”